The Olympic Park in Stratford is ready for us, but are we ready for it?

To the Olympic Park, aka the safest place in the world – aside perhaps from the presidential bunker or Fort Knox. Anyone concerned that the Games will be a target for lunatic jihadists should stop worrying; what with the surface-to-air missiles and the 17,000-odd Army personnel who will patrol the site during the games, the whole thing has a really relaxed atmosphere to it. “Soviet,” nodded a friend who had been there a couple of weeks before me. And though the Google Map on my phone told me I was in London, I could have been on the moon for all the resemblance it bears to the capital city (though, actually, that’s a rubbish comparison, because at least on the moon there wouldn’t be as many branches of McDonald’s).

I had gone to the Stratford site to get my media accreditation. This was an exciting moment. As I wrote last week, I am filled with enthusiasm for the Games, and that still stands. My opinion is very much that we have them, so we might as well enjoy them – and if you don’t want to enjoy them, then quit your moaning and use the two and a bit weeks as an opportunity to go on a nice summer holiday. But I am going to be honest with you: this is going to take a bit of getting used to.

It was a typical July afternoon on the day of my visit – you know, sky lined with black clouds, lashing with rain, that kind of thing – and so perhaps I did not see the park in its best light. Sadly, looking at the long-range weather forecast, it seems that nobody will. Getting off the Tube at Stratford, I was directed through Westfield shopping centre by a man in a pink Olympics bib whose rictus grin said: “You better have brought your credit card with you.”

For 10 minutes, you walk through Westfield, trying not to a) shop or b) get stabbed. Finally, you get to the Olympic Park, which close up looks like a giant board game roughly the size of Milton Keynes. There you are greeted by several soldiers in uniform, which makes you wonder if you have taken a wrong turning to a military checkpoint in Afghanistan; only when it starts to rain do you remember that no, you are definitely in London.

The friendly soldiers – they didn’t appear to have guns – usher you through airport- style security. It is useful to remember, when planning your trip to the Olympic Park, that you need to leave roughly as much time as you would if you were going on a long-haul flight. Even once you are in, it’s not as if everything is just a short stroll away – this place has its own road system, and its very own public transport.

After a 10-minute bus ride, I walked for another 10 minutes to the media centre. When I got to the media centre, I was told that I was in the wrong place for media accreditation, which was… yes, a 10-minute walk away.

The nice lady gave me a bottle of water for my journey, which took me through a car park out of the park, and then on to a tent at the side of a motorway that looked a bit like the type the police erect around murder scenes. There, I was handed my accreditation, but not an Olympic medal, which by this point I felt I deserved.

Then – horror! – more security. The bloke manning the X-ray checkpoint announced that I had to hand over my water bottle. I sighed. “It’s bull----,” he exclaimed, in agreement. “All bull---!” For the record, the bar serving alcoholic beverages is next to the media centre. I will see you there to raise a glass to a very, very British Olympics.

'Sir Mick Jagger’? One would prefer knee surgery...

Doesn’t the Queen get better and better with age? During her Jubilee weekend, everyone spoke of Her Majesty’s “quiet dignity”. But the most quietly dignified thing she has done in recent years must surely have been to schedule a knee operation for the day Mick Jagger was due to be knighted. According to a new book about the Rolling Stones front man, our monarch did not think him an appropriate candidate for the title – she “did not have the stomach” to bestow him with the honour (how tempting it would have been to let the sword slip as you knighted him).

Sir Mick Jagger, as it is only polite to call him, once described the Queen as “chief witch”. He also announced that “anarchy is the only slight glimmer of hope”.

So you can’t blame the Queen for absenting herself from Buckingham Palace in 2003 when the time came for Mick to receive his reward for being Tony Blair’s favourite rock star (the former PM, said an old school friend, “absolutely modelled himself on Mick Jagger”). Instead, the Prince of Wales did the honours. Chris Hoy, Peter Blake, Michael Gambon and Christopher Lee – all of whom were also knighted by Prince Charles – should not see this as a slight on their achievements (cough, splutter).

Anyway, the Queen isn’t the only one who found the whole thing distasteful. At the time, Jagger’s bandmate Keith Richards quipped: “I don’t want to go on stage with someone wearing a f------ coronet and sporting the old ermine.”

Now there’s a man who deserves to be knighted.

Undressed for the part

Now I love a select committee hearing as much as the next person. We do tend to hold good inquiries: we’ve got stars (Hugh Grant, Charlotte Church), heroes (Robert Jay QC) and villains (Tony Blair, Bob Diamond, Rupert Murdoch). There’s even the odd protester who comes in to fling a custard pie. This is Parliament as pantomime, but there is one problem: the sets.

It’s the desks, which look like they are made from Formica, and the tatty chairs. At the inquiry into media ethics, it looks as if everything goes on behind a bedsheet Lord Justice Leveson hastily pins up before proceedings begin. The West Wing this ain’t. Given that Parliament is housed in one of the most beautiful buildings in the country, couldn’t we do a little better than this? Perhaps we should launch an inquiry…

We love Pyongyang

Scandal! Outrage! If there was a North Korean version of Heat magazine, this would surely be all over it. According to reports from South Korea, Kim Jong-un, the new leader, has been having an affair with a married pop star.

She is Hyon Song-wol and she has been pictured with Jong-un at various events, despite the fact she is said to be married with a child. Song-wol, who has a name made for a musician, used to be the lead singer of the Bochonbo Electronic Music Band.

Her patriotic hits include Footsteps of Soldiers, I Love Pyongyang and We Are Troops of the Party. But my favourite is Excellent Horse-Like Lady, which is reminiscent of Abba’s early work. It is certainly no worse than much of the pap we have to put up with, and at least the video that accompanies it doesn’t involve her writhing around with barely any clothes on, à la Rihanna.

Instead, Song-wol is depicted working happily in a factory.

Speech no impediment

Although it is often thought that football players are incapable of coherent speech, the trial of John Terry proves that they do have their own finely tuned dialect for communicating on the pitch. Perhaps it will one day be a subject for study (professor to class: “So when he says to his colleague that he is a f------ black c---, what he is actually doing is sarcastically conveying disbelief that his colleague might believe he was capable of such a slur…”)

My favourite exchange involving John Terry took place not on the pitch, but in the court. The Chelsea player told the prosecuting lawyer that opponents sometimes called him fat. “You’re not fat though, are you?” replied the lawyer. “You’re a supreme athlete.” To which the player responded: “I used to be…” And the man is still paid £160,000 a week.